Mount Pleasant. Elmhurst. The Valley Arts District. These are all neighborhoods whose offerings I thought I knew well, having worked in and around Providence over the last few years. But you can certainly miss a lot of subtle, intricate treasure troves of experience in this city if you’re not looking for them. As the Gallery […]
After attending Chalumeau’s release party for their album BLUE at The Met in Pawtucket last August, I wrote that if you ever got the chance to see them perform live, you should jump on it. On Friday, March 13, a room full of Providence music lovers took that advice, and The Parlour on N. Main […]
If you’re as chronically online as I am, you might have caught wind of the way people from in and out of state romanticize a Rhode Island summer and share the nostalgia of having fallen in love here. Perhaps there’s something about the salty air breezing in from the bay on quiet beaches or the […]
Ricardo and Bernadet Pitts-Wiley of the Mixed Magic Theatre in Pawtucket have been married for 48 years, and have been colleagues in the theatre space for 26. Over the last few years, I’ve noticed how there are so many Black trauma narratives and painful histories being told in different forms of Black art. It’s almost […]
On a chilly December morning, Robert recounts to me the time he played his mother’s favorite song, Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road” through his hi-fi system. After the cumbersome time spent lugging the equipment and then managing to make it all fit in a compact space like a living room, he recalls how within the first […]
In the living room of his childhood home, a young Rich Lupo would sit as if under a spell, transistor radio pressed to his ear while the television played in the background. Especially at a young age, humans can soak up whatever they’re exposed to like sponges, albeit sometimes subconsciously. His father, a singing bartender, […]
There used to be an old, elevated train system in Boston, spanning from the Roxbury area to downtown. Dark and dirty, it wasn’t exactly glamorous, but beneath it sat a storefront displaying boxes of cheap books. It was here that you could find a young Errick Nunnally rifling through boxes of torn-cover books being sold […]
I had the pleasure of sitting down to meet with Leandro “Kufa” Castro at El Eden restaurant on Broad Street in PVD’s West End, where the aromas of hearty Dominican dishes and the sound of Spanish being spoken created the perfect backdrop for our conversation. As someone who has made it a personal mission to […]
Do you ever have those seasons where you become hyper fixated on a specific interest for a time? I’ve been through many, whether it’s one musical artist, a new TV show and all of its accompanying lore, or a certain style of dress. A few years ago, I found myself drawn to the Afrofuturist movement […]
In the parking lot of Temple of Restoration church in Pawtucket, I was amazed to experience not just a pop-up farmers market (where I was able to procure some truly beautiful-looking corn, peaches, and green bell peppers), but to be somewhere that felt like home, even though I had never been there before. Farmers from […]